Facebook+Droid+HTC; the new iOS 7

Fresh, from the Facebook, HTC, Android and Apple camps

It seems like we’re just a day or so away from what many are expecting to be the latest iteration of a Facebook phone that’s powered by Android and manufactured by HTC. Facebook announced the event at the end of March, promising to show off their new home on Android. HTC – who have previously released Facebook-oriented phones ChaCha and Salsa – are being touted as the manufacturers of this all-new Facebook+Android powered mid-range phone.

The choice of a mid-range device, which will likely be very affordable, isn’t surprising for the social network that offers 0.Facebook.com, a free mobile access service for developing countries. The ‘HTC First’ will supposedly have a 4.3-inch 720p display, dual-core Snapdragon processor, a 5-megapixel shooter and Android 4.1. Yes, that’s mid-range now.

It’s strange that news this big should be overshadowed, but it has been, by none other than Apple. While we’ve recently heard rumours about Apple’s plans for a mid-year announcement of the iPhone 5S and the low-cost iPhone. Apple refreshed the iPad line late last year, introducing the iPad 4, despite the iPad 3 having only been released in March 2012.

The big news, however, is in reports of the development of iOS 7 being delayed. It is being developed by Sir Jony Ive, who took over from Scott Forstall, after CEO Tim Cook fired the latter for the debacle that was the Maps app. After the display of shoddy work – a rare and widely publicised event – on the app, Forstall was pinpointed as the weak link and his projects were spread out, with the work on iOS being handed over to the prolific Sir Jony to oversee.

This was a big move for Apple, and given the love that even non-Apple fanboys have for Apple’s hardware design, everyone’s waiting to see what a non-skeuomorphic iOS looks like. Forstall, credited with creating iOS, was a big fan of skeuomorphism – as was the late Steve Jobs. However, Cook’s reasoning behind Forstall’s firing was partly to allow for a more integrated design for hardware and software – leading to Ive’s being handed design supervision duties – and also better integration for desktop and mobile software, leading to Craig Federighi’s being handed supervision of OS X and iOS teams.

We could be looking at a complete overhaul, as work has apparently slowed down to a point where Apple has had to pull engineers off OS X in order to work on iOS 7. We could also simply be looking at Cook’s pushing the team to make sure we don’t see history repeat itself – but on an OS-level, instead of just a Maps app.